I can’t say it often enough.

People are shocked when hamalli behave like hamalli. Why?

How else do you expect them to behave?

So can you all stop using it as though it’s something ‘tal-pepe’ people say?

The person who put it into usage was the one who coined it: that lousy Marisa Micallef, currently our woman in Washington, in the days when she was a Gonzi lackey with her tongue hanging out and drooling all over him in her newspaper columns.

Tal-pepe people say “the Nationalists” or more properly, “In-Nazzjonalisti”.

He is the son of a Mintoffian grocer who had a house in Amery Street, Sliema. conveniently just a few doors up from his grocer’s shop, requisitioned for him by the Mintoffian government.

Michael’s mother, a very, very nice woman called Karmena, remained illiterate all her life and was from Gozo. She came to work in Sliema as a maid in those days when maids were poor girls who lived in for bed and board, and she met Muse, Michael’s father, who worked for the corner grocer.

They married, and he took over the shop.

Karmena and Muse drove Michael and his younger brother Silvio very hard to study and succeed, but their original ‘success’ was actually due to nothing more than Mintoffian political patronage, for they both got jobs at the bank when the banks were controlled by the Labour Party, and the banks even sponsored their law studies.

They didn’t do that for everyone, but only for cronies.

The mind boggles.

But there you are.

It is not nice to admit it but we all have to lump it .
The Maltese nation has been hijacked by a not so small minority.